


something slightly wonderful

by takingoffmyshoes



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Gen, General Domesticity, Mild Fluff, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Sharing a Bed, Team Dynamics, Tropes, spies can have a little sleep as a treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:20:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28062312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takingoffmyshoes/pseuds/takingoffmyshoes
Summary: A difficult mission, a well-earned rest, and some time to simply be. Theirs is a difficult life, but not without respite.
Relationships: Illya Kuryakin & Gaby Teller, Illya Kuryakin & Napoleon Solo, Illya Kuryakin & Napoleon Solo & Gaby Teller, Napoleon Solo & Gaby Teller
Comments: 10
Kudos: 36
Collections: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Winter Holiday Gift Exchange 2020





	something slightly wonderful

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coaldustcanary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coaldustcanary/gifts).



> happy holidays to everyone, and to canary in particular! i kept frantically looking back at your requests, second-guessing myself, chopping this, building it up again, chopping it, looking back at your requests, etc., so it is my very earnest hope that this gives you at least a little bit of happiness!

They make a sorry picture as they leave Monaco. Monte Carlo was fine but Geneva the week before had not been, and so by the time they board the small private plane that is to spirit them to their next assignment, Illya's injured shoulder is stiff and aching with the cold, Solo is miserably sick with something he picked up after an ill-advised but unavoidable dip in the Rhône, and Gaby hasn't slept more than a couple of hours a night in nearly ten days.

Solo sleeps through the short flight, quiet but for the occasional coughing. Gaby envies him even that much, though she has no desire for the fever that makes it possible. A flush is creeping into his cheeks again, across the aisle in the dim cabin. Illya gave his jacket over to Solo's use – more specifically, he dropped it over him when he'd started shivering ten minutes in – and sat back down beside her, rigid and uncomfortable in the cramped seats. His jacket is on the ground, now, and his right arm is held carefully against his chest to ease the strain of the healing ligaments. He says nothing, doesn't look around. Just sits and breathes the stale, dry air.

They are fraying.

Not as a team, since despite the ribbing and arguing and occasional serious disagreements that come part and parcel with a team made up of such different people, they have been growing steadily closer, more trusting, more open; rather, each individually is unravelling, losing strength in tiny increments, as after being twisted too long in the wrong direction the strands of themselves are loosening bit by bit.

Maybe, with enough time, they will all be braided into one, but for now they are coming apart.

* * *

They touch down outside of London, as Waverly's torso appears through the cabin door to tell them. He's scarfed and hatted against grey skies and gently swirling snow, and Gaby holds back a sigh. She wants to be disappointed they're not somewhere warmer, but quite frankly, she doesn't have the energy.

"Ms. Teller, Mr. Kuryakin," Waverly greets warmly, then leans in a little further to peer over at Solo, still asleep, whose breathing has grown rough with the hint of a wheeze. Waverly eyes him for a moment before drawing back to take them all in at once. "Thank heavens Mr. Solo had the good graces to fall so conveniently ill," he finally says. "I'd say this makes it much easier to get you three a vacation."

Waverly is as good as his word. The hotel he takes them to is nice; large and comfortable but not opulent, and far enough from the heart of the city that there's no real pressure to accomplish anything. Even the traffic through that part of town is light and lazy on a December Tuesday. Illya once again wakes Solo, who nearly succeeds in covering his disorientation with a glib remark and a harsh cough, and ushers him out of the car and into the lobby with a hand on his back, eyebrows drawn down and mouth tight, entire body hunched in on itself against the cold or something else. Gaby gets out of the car with them but simply stands and watches. She nearly misses Waverly lifting their bags out of the trunk and is more startled than she should be by his mild, "Shall we?"

In the lobby, Illya is stiff and straight-backed against the polite inquisitiveness of the receptionist, and Solo leans slumped against the wall with exhaustion hanging from every crease and fold. Waverly takes the check-in and two bags, Gaby takes the third, and Illya takes Solo.

It seems they make a sorry picture in London, too.

"What exactly is the matter with Mr. Solo?" Waverly asks once they're in their suite of rooms and the man in question has let Illya sit him down on one of the beds, strip him of his shoes, jacket, waistcoat, and tie, and nudge him into lying down. Gaby, meanwhile, has made good use of her time by locating the alcohol.

Illya shrugs. "Bronchitis, probably." He doesn't look particularly concerned, but in his own way, he is.

"Ah. And your shoulder?"

"Dislocated," Gaby informs him between sips of bourbon. Illya narrows his eyes; Waverly catches it and turns to him.

"And Ms. Teller?"

"Insomnia," Illya says, apathetic report shot through with a fine seam of relish, and gets a nod in response.

A bleak fog of silence descends over the room. Ordinarily, Gaby would break it. Today, there doesn't seem to be a point.

"Naturally," Waverly says, after they've had sufficient time to wallow, "none of this was in any one of your reports. Why is that?"

Gaby and Illya shrug in unison. Gaby tosses back the rest of her drink. Illya hovers by the half-closed door to the room where Solo is resting.

Waverly looks between them and appears to read all the words they haven't said. "I see. Well, my thanks to you for a job well done, and do try your best to enjoy the next two weeks. You needn't stay here, of course, but we'll gladly foot the bill if you choose to, and I expect Mr. Solo at least might appreciate a few days of rest before moving on."

"Of course," Illya says stiffly. "Thank you."

And he's gone.

"We have a very odd handler," Illya observes, and goes back in to check on Solo.

The suite includes a small kitchen, generously stocked, clearly recently. Gaby raids it to put together an ice pack, which she brings it into Solo's room and holds out to Illya. "For your shoulder," she says. "You should rest it some more."

Illya shakes his head. He's sitting on the edge of the bed, frowning down at the dark tumble of Solo's hair and the pale half of his face that isn’t mashed into the pillow. He's asleep again, and deeply – it’s unusual for him, but he clearly needs it. "You're the one who needs rest,” he says after a bit, looking up at her. “I know you haven't been sleeping. I’ll stay here.”

"I'm not asking you to leave, I'm telling you to ice your shoulder. And to wear the damn sling," she adds. "I didn't steal it so it could sit in your bag."

Illya rolls his eyes and mutters something under his breath. "If I do this, you will sleep, yes?"

"Sure," Gaby says easily. She probably won't, even despite her full intentions to give it her best shot.

He holds out a hand. She snorts and knocks it aside. "Even you can't do this yourself." She puts the ice against his shoulder, lets him position it, then ties it in place with a dish towel. 

"Sling?"

"Outside pocket of black bag, I think."

That's exactly where it is, and getting Illya to put it on is likewise easier than it should be.

"Now sleep," he says, once he's arranged the strap across his shoulder and settled the weight of his arm into the fabric.

"And if I can't?" The question is mostly rhetorical; she's already shucking off her shoes and slithering out of her stockings.

"I have medication," Illya says absently, still fiddling with the sling. His injured shoulder has to be grateful for the support, but the other shoulder is probably less happy. That's the way of it, after all: the strain never disappears, just goes somewhere else for a while.

"You too, huh?" Her skirt falls to the floor around her in a soft pile.

"I do not often have to— What are you doing?"

Lifting the blankets on the other side of the bed and crawling in beside Solo in nothing but her underwear and soft shirt. "It's too early for pyjamas," she says into the pillow, then, "Jesus, he's a furnace." It's not the first time she's shared a bed with Solo, but she has only ever literally shared a bed with him. Apparently this involves a lot of vicious nocturnal kicking on her part, not that she remembers it in the morning.

Perhaps it's a measure of how tired she is, or how relieved she is at the idea of two weeks with no mentionable responsibilities, or how warm he is – God, she's not even that close to him – but she doesn't remember it ever feeling so good to sink into a mattress already bowed with the weight of another body. "Easier for you if we're in one place," she says – or at least, she thinks she does – and if Illya has anything to say to that, she doesn't hear it.

* * *

She wakes up alone and with absolutely no idea what time it is. Someone has left a set of her pyjamas folded on the other side of the bed, where Solo had been, and she pulls them on before venturing out into the common room.

Illya is sitting at the table with his profile to her, but it's the sight of Napoleon that draws her up short. And he is Napoleon, when he's raw and open like this, free of his ever-present facade as he has been only a handful of times. He looks dreadful – skin pale, eyes red-rimmed, hair a mess of tufts and curls – and one hand prods listlessly at a bowl of something while the other appears to be the only thing keeping his head up.

"Solo?" she asks, voice rough with sleep. "What are you doing up?"

"He needs to eat," Illya says. He looks at neither of them, and it's clearly not the first time he's said it.

"Peril," Napoleon starts, and his voice grates painfully.

"No," Illya cuts him off, but he doesn't sound angry. He just sounds tired. "Two more bites, Cowboy, come on. It's not so much."

Gaby looks between the two of them, Illya firm but worried, Napoleon several shades whiter than usual and dull-eyed like she's never seen before.

"It won't do much good if it just makes him sick," she points out.

Illya makes a frustrated noise and speaks like he's dealing with a child. "It shouldn't make him sick, it's only broth."

"I'm right here," Solo reminds them half-heartedly. Illya ignores him, just glares at the bowl. The spoon rises mechanically once, twice, and then Solo has to drop it in order to cough deeply into his elbow.

"Good," says Illya, once he's finished.

"Bed," says Gaby.

Napoleon looks up at her with an exhaustion she can't put into words, looks back at Illya again, and nods. It takes more effort than it should, but he manages to push himself up. Illya waits until Solo's at least marginally upright under his own power before he pushes his own chair back to stand and get his good arm around Napoleon's waist to steady him.

"You're more trouble than you're worth, Cowboy," he mutters. Napoleon just lists against him. "All right, you heard. Bed. Nice and easy, let's go..." Napoleon's steps are careful, deliberate, like he's walking on ice rather than carpet, or like his joints ache and he's trying not to show it.

He's horrifically docile. That more than anything else puts her on guard: Solo has gotten better about accepting their help when he needs it, but he still has a long way to go in terms of not being an asshole about it, and right now he's more passive and accepting than he's ever been about anything in his entire life, she's sure of it.

He must be feeling even worse than he looks.

She, on the other hand, is feeling marginally better after her nap, which the clock in the kitchen tells her lasted several hours, making it more of a sleep than a nap. It's evening now, and long since dark out. London is actually somewhat south of Berlin, but having spent most of the past months in places far more southern still, she’s a bit unused to such early nightfall.

She helps herself to a bowl of the soup keeping warm on the stove, and recognises it at the first whiff. Solyanka. No wonder Solo had to be forced to choke it down. She’ll never understand Illya’s love of the stuff; nutritious it may be, but there are entirely too many flavours thrown together in it to be appetising. But necessity wins out as it so often does, and she eats determinedly around the pickles and clumps of dill. The meat, at least, is tender, and the onions soft and sweet. 

Their Russian is a surprisingly good cook, even if his choices leave something to be desired.

She putters around a bit, more out of habit than of any real desire to be useful, but quickly runs out of things to do once the leftover soup has cooled and been stowed in the refrigerator. So she brushes her teeth, scrubs off the lingering vestiges of makeup from two days ago, and goes back to bed.

Solo’s already out, curled on his side against Illya, who’s in his pyjamas and under the covers but still sitting up against the pillows, reading.

Gaby slips in on Illya’s other side and snuggles up close to him, shamelessly sucking his warmth just as Solo is doing.

“Do you want anything?” Illya asks softly. “To help you sleep?”

“Just this,” she says, wriggling down so that her head is on the very edge of the pillow and the blankets are up around her ears. The comforting weight of Illya’s hand settles on her head, and she sighs a quiet sigh, letting her tired eyes close. “Wake me up if you need anything,” she mumbles, then – miracle of miracles – drifts off to sleep once more.

* * *

At some point during the night she half wakes to the sounds of whispered Russian. She isn't aware enough to understand what's being said, but Illya's voice is low and soothing and Napoleon's is hoarse and rasping. Nightmare, perhaps. It's not long before they both fall quiet, and then she isn't far behind.

* * *

The sun is shining through the gaps around the curtain in the morning, and it's unutterably delicious to wake up to the warm kiss of sunlight on her face. She pushes herself up to see that Illya and Napoleon are still asleep, fitted together back to chest with Illya's arms around Napoleon. In a way it's sweet, but it's also private, a sight not meant for her or anyone else. She leaves them as they are and goes to out to find breakfast.

A cup of coffee and two slices of toast after her return, Illya joins her in the sitting room. The sling is nowhere to be seen, but he's moving less stiffly so perhaps the ice and rest yesterday helped. That makes two of them on the mend. "How's he doing?" she asks about the third.

Illy prods through the newspapers on the table, brought up with breakfast, and grunts. "Not so good."

"How not good is 'not so good'?"

Illya shoots her a flat look. "Not so good."

The day passes as lazily as the sun through the sky. Solo sleeps through most of it, an impressive feat given the force and frequency of the coughing. Gaby bullies Illya into icing his shoulder again and takes his place in the room with Solo. She reclines on the empty half of the bed, flipping through magazines and catalogues.

Beside her, Solo sleeps the solid, heavy sleep of the feverishly ill until he coughs himself awake sometime in the afternoon (jolts her awake, too, since she'd given in and let herself doze off after lunch) and it's a good thirty seconds before he gets himself under control again. "Well," he rasps afterwards, between shaking breaths, "that was unfortunate."

If he was trying for smooth, he’d fallen very short of it. He's pale but for the flush in his cheeks, and the hair curling against his forehead is damp with sweat. There's a part of Gaby that wants to put a hand on his shoulder, tell him it's all right, that he's shaken up but he'll be fine. The part of her that has actually _met_ Napoleon Solo knows that this will never work. If she reaches out with sympathy, the fault lines he's been gradually exposing will snap back together with enough rebound force that someone will end up getting hurt, and it will probably be him.

"Illya thinks you have pneumonia," she says instead. Illya, who'd appeared in the doorway about halfway through, tries to to protest, but she goes on over him. "Personally, I think that's ridiculous. Falling into rivers and getting pneumonia is far too dramatic, even for you."

He opens one eye. "Then what do you think?"

"The plague," she says without missing a beat, and it startles a laugh out of him. Of course he starts coughing again almost immediately, but when he tries to push himself up on shaky arms, Gaby beats him to it and hauls him upright against the pillows. “Breathe, Solo,” she says unhelpfully, and he pulls himself together enough to shoot her a quelling glare.

She does put a hand on his shoulder then, but firmly, like Illya would – no sympathy, just commiseration – and leaves it there until he relaxes, breathing slowly returning to normal.

“You’ll be fine, you know,” she says at last. “I expect even your pride will recover.”

He huffs a bit, but otherwise doesn’t respond. 

“Waverly was right,” she goes on, looking up at Illya, still hovering in the doorway. “We do need a break. All of us.” Neither disagrees, but she can tell it’s a near thing. Illya reflexively shies away from the idea of _needing_ anything, and Solo… Well, she suspects his misgivings have more to do with the idea of a handler acting altruistically, and with the uncertainty of what that apparent generosity will later demand in payment, but she can’t know for certain. It’s not like he’s going to _tell_ her.

“I suppose,” Solo allows eventually, which almost gets a laugh out of her. Of all of them, he’s the least able to deny it: he’s wearing a thick sweater pulled on over one of Illya’s turtlenecks, but he still shivers occasionally, and he hasn’t shrugged away from her touch.

“Why don’t you sleep on it?” Illya offers dryly, and Solo huffs again, this time in amusement.

“Maybe I will,” he agrees, and lies back down to do just that.

He dozes away the rest of the afternoon and seems much more himself when it comes time to drag him out of bed for dinner. At Gaby’s firm insistence, Illya had prepared something with no pickles or dill to speak of. It’s a simple meal, just bread and cheese and smoked sausage, and is far more satisfying than anything fancier would have been. 

They don’t talk much beyond the basic utilities of sharing a meal, but that suits her fine: she’s tired, and is having enough trouble corralling her foggy thoughts even in German that putting them into English is sure to be more effort than it’s worth. 

The past couple of days have taken the edge off, but her exhaustion is still a massive, looming thing, a glacier bearing down on her slowly and inexorably. It will take more time than they’ve been given here to melt it down completely, but perhaps she can shrink it down to something manageable.

As wordlessly as she had eaten, she helps clean up, washes her face, changes into her pyjamas, returns to her magazines, and reads herself to sleep.

* * *

She comes awake in the dead of the night and is almost comforted by the return to predictability until she realises that it’s not her mind which has woken her up, but the throbbing, grinding ache in the tops of both her feet. She curses quietly and pulls her knees up to her chest so she can reach down to try to rub out the worst of the pain. They haven’t hurt like this in… Well, probably only months, but still. 

There’s not all that much she truly regrets about her life before U.N.C.L.E. – plenty she _resents_ , but relatively little she had enough control over to truly _regret_ – and normally her dancing career isn’t one of those regrets, but sometimes… Sometimes she wishes she’d been a little less brave, a little less stoic, a little less ambitious, a little more far-sighted, because being able to so clearly feel every single metatarsal fracture she incurred in her pointe shoes is fucking _annoying_. 

At least it’s usually just snow that sets them off; if rain were also enough to do it, she’d probably have murdered someone out of sheer crabbiness at least once by now.

She switches feet, right to left, starts digging her thumbs between the bones and tendons and looking for anything she can relieve: knots, swelling, anything she can _do_ something about. Naturally, of course, there’s nothing. Nothing but a diffuse ache that seems to come from nowhere yet settle everywhere, most vividly along lines she can almost visualise after all these years. 

She goes back to her right foot, wiggles and cracks her toes, forces an arch and a flex, and repeats the process until her skin is warm, at least, then does the other, and back and forth until the tiredness of her hands outweighs the ache in her feet. 

It’s all three of them in the bed again tonight, and it’s still a tight fit, but when she rolls back over and snugs up against Illya’s broad shoulder, well. It’s nice, is all.

She takes a risk, presses the tops of her feet against Illya’s calves. He doesn’t wake, doesn’t react, doesn’t move. 

It’s a quiet acquiescence, but she’ll take it.

* * *

She wakes up again just before dawn to the same grinding ache, and gives in. It hurts worse when there’s nothing to distract her from it, so she might as well get up and seek distraction. 

She slips out of bed with a curse, hisses as her bare feet hit the cool floor, and stomps over to the first piece of luggage she sees in search of socks. It is, fortunately, her own, and she rifles through it for the thickest pair she’d packed. Finding them, she tugs them on, balancing easily on one aching foot at a time, and grabs a sweater while she’s there.

The sitting room with its kitchenette has broad windows, framed by curtains they hadn’t bothered to draw, and the snow falling slowly but thickly on the far side of the glass isn’t at all surprising. 

A cursory shake shows the kettle to be almost empty; she fills it, and while it heats she puts herself through her stretches. _Frappés_ and _tendus_ and _ronds de jambe_ , first flat then _elevé_ , then rolling her toes under her to crack them. It won’t help, but it won’t make it worse, either, and it’s something to focus on. She goes up to _relevé_ and down again, over and over, in first and second and third and fourth, but fifth pinches something in her ankles so she abandons it, returning to second to press into the arch, seeking relief in the stretch. When she brings her heels back to the ground, she brings them together into first with a _tendu_ , folds forward, and does a few _ports de bras_.

As usual, she’d timed it well: the kettle is just now beginning to steam. She makes herself a mug of tea and carries it over to the window to watch the snow, using each motion as a metronome, counting out the timing of a languid Saint-Saens. Her feet ache, as they always have and always will, but less so now that she’s worked some of the stiffness out, and for all the unpleasantness it brings her, there’s something slightly wonderful about a snowy morning. Even her exhaustion is at bay, here as she stands and watches the first light of the day begin to seep through the heavy clouds.

Being alone in her wakefulness is a well-worn familiarity, but it’s not all the same. There’s the lonely, angry hopelessness of staring wide-eyed at a night-darkened, knowing that dawn is creeping closer with every frustrated second, and then there’s the peaceful solitude of glimpsing a world that few others will ever get to see, the quiet acceptance of little wonders in fair payment for her sleeplessness.

It’s far easier to turn frustration into acceptance when she knows that she has time to try again, to seek what she needs. With Solo sick and Illya healing, she won’t face judgement for her afternoon naps, her early evenings, her late mornings, and everything in between. She probably wouldn’t face judgement for it even in different circumstances, actually. They’ve never treated her as anything less than a partner, surprising as that sometimes is.

She’d been prepared for pigs, of course. When Waverly first explained her task, something dark and angry had condensed in her chest and settled with a sneer. From that moment on, she’d been preparing herself for leers and lewd comments, for the need to fight and beat them down and force them to see her as a person, for surviving on the promise of revenge if ever anything was done to deserve it.

They hadn’t been like that.

Solo has a fairly fluid understanding of personal space (“hug me,” _honestly_ ), and Illya had dressed her up like a _doll_ the first time they met, but that had been for the job. She hadn’t quite understood the difference at first, and had indeed gotten her revenge on Illya by tackling him into a coffee table, fuelled by vodka-loosened restraint and years of pent-up anger at being held and examined and turned and examined and directed and examined and talked about and _examined_ —

But after that, it was Illya’s hands on her thigh, only there because she dared them to be; Solo’s grip around her arms as he dragged her out of the wreckage; Illya’s hand on her shoulder afterwards, probably even colder from the rain but still a comforting weight through the rough fabric of the blanket tugged around her, and she realised that those touches had only ever marked her as an equal, and never as an object. 

She still gets them – light pressure on her shoulder to ask her attention, soft kicks under the table to half-heartedly rebuke her for an overly scathing remark, impersonal and seemingly unthinking nudges to her limbs to correct her form for shooting and fighting and lock-picking, but never _stand straight, eyes up, head still, arch, lilt, drape, be quiet, don’t cause trouble_. Never threats, never condescension, never superiority. (They save that for each other, and even then it’s an act more often than not.)

Instead of harassment, she got Solo’s warm if somewhat distant friendliness and Illya’s earnest attempts to do right by her.

And, well. It’s nice, is all. 

They don’t begrudge her her weaknesses, and she doesn’t begrudge them theirs. They cover each other, support each other, prop each other up, and that matters more than the fact that they still snip and snarl and shout at each other occasionally. What does a petty squabble count for against the knowledge that the person who infuriates you over breakfast wouldn’t hesitate to take a bullet for you over lunch? _Very little_ , it turns out. _Almost nothing._

Almost nothing at all.

* * *

She’s on her second mug of tea when the bedroom door opens and Solo comes out. He looks vaguely displeased by existence in general, which admittedly isn’t too far off from his usual expression, and then raises his eyebrows at the snow still drifting determinedly downwards and turns to her with a scandalised little question in his eyes.

Gaby snorts. “Snow in December,” she agrees. “What _will_ they think of next.”

Solo shakes his head, utterly put-upon, and continues across the sitting room towards the little kitchen. He’s still moving a bit stiffly, and his wordlessness – perhaps voicelessness – hasn’t passed her by, but looking at him doesn’t worry her anymore. She wonders, briefly and pointlessly, and concludes the answer to her own question before she’s finished forming it: of course her partners can see her exhaustion as easily as she sees theirs, but whether or not they _worry_ for her doesn’t really matter. If they do, she’s grateful they don’t show it more; if they don’t, then at least they’re pragmatic enough to recognise when necessity outweighs pride. Whatever the case, it’s another facet of equality, another easy demonstration of trust.

“It makes my feet hurt,” she says without entirely meaning to. “The snow. So I kind of hate it, even though it’s beautiful.”

Solo, busying himself with his own tea, looks another question over his shoulder at her.

She’s moved from the window to the other side of the room, curled up on the couch with her feet tucked carefully under her. She shrugs. “I’ve broken so many bones in them that I stopped keeping track about halfway through. They’re all healed, but I always know when it’s going to snow.”

“Ballet?” he asks, and they both make a face at the sound of his voice. 

She nods. “Leaves marks like this job does, if more subtly.” He hums faintly in agreement, turns back around to rummage for the sugar, then makes his way over to her. He settles on the other side of the couch, slouching horrendously so that his head can rest on the back. 

“Left arm,” he says after a bit. “Broke it badly several years ago, still feel it when it gets cold. What helps your feet?”

“Not much. Stretching helps a bit, but mostly I just try not to pay attention to it.”

He chuckles, coughs a bit, and takes a swig of steaming tea. “So you’ll be miserable for two weeks here with nothing to do?” he asks once it’s scalded its way down.

“I’ll be _annoyed_ ,” she corrects, “not miserable. But if you’re that concerned, you can help distract me.”

“I’m sure we can find something to do,” Solo agrees, just a little too smoothly to be sincere, and smiles, just a little sly.

“I’m sure _you_ can, anyway,” Gaby says sweetly, which gets another soft laugh.

* * *

The day is quiet, muted and perhaps a little bit enchanted by the snow which continues to fall. Gaby spends most of it on the couch, napping and reading and having tea and snacks brought to her by Solo and Illya, then almost falls asleep in the bath when she finally gives in to the desire to soak herself in nearly-scalding water until her muscles feel like stew meat. Illya comes in to make sure she doesn’t drown and ends up washing her hair for her. She refreshes the water twice, letting the cold drain away and adding more hot, and drags herself out of the third batch before it can cool down too much. Her feet are puffy from the heat and wrinkled from the water, but they ache less, and the rest of her is pliant and content enough not to care.

Then they all go to bed together, as they have for months, and there’s something slightly wonderful about that, too.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! i hope everyone's staying safe and being responsible, and as always, feel free to leave any feedback you'd like to.


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